A former 40 year Atheist analyzes Atheism, without resorting to theism, deism, or fantasy.***If You Don't Value Truth, Then What DO You Value?***If we say that the sane can be coaxed and persuaded to rationality, and we say that rationality presupposes logic, then what can we say of those who actively reject logic?***Atheists have an obligation to give reasons in the form of logic and evidence for rejecting Theist theories.

"While Israel’s campus enemies at UC Davis and elsewhere feel free to speak against it in the most destructive and venomous way possible, as occurred last week, at the same time, pro-Israel, anti-terrorism voices are marginalized, disregarded, shouted down, or denounced as hate speech, unworthy of being part of an ongoing, vigorous debate, and deserving only of being punished and silenced by those who want only one side of the debate to be heard in what should be a vigorous, thoughtful debate in the ‘marketplace of ideas.’

That clearly was the very motivation for the 2013 resolution passed by the ASUCD Senate, Senate Resolution 21, which sought to condemn and identify what supporters term “Islamophobic” speech at UC Davis. The resolution, which was passed after a controversial Ayn Rand Society event on radical Islam, “Islamists Rising,” was held, defined Islamophobia as “the irrational fear of Islam, Muslims or anything related to the Islamic or Arab cultures and traditions.” The authors of the resolution wished to use the resolution to suppress speech by critics of radical Islam, and were successful in categorizing any view about Islam with which they did not agree to be outside the bounds of acceptable speech; in fact, it was henceforth categorized as “hate speech” and unwelcomed on campus. Presumably, criticizing the genocidal charter of Islamic Hamas, or condemning the group’s unending attacks on Israeli civilians for the purpose of murdering Jews, could thereby be considered a type of hate speech, Islamophobic, or contrary to the accepted values of the UC Davis campus.

Obviously, last week’s successful resolution vote signaled to many pro-Palestinian students that not only did they no longer have to apologize for Islamic terror, they could proudly, and publicly, swear allegiance to Hamas while screaming “Allah Akbar” at Jewish students during the divestment vote (a phrase which, among others, the 9/11 hijackers screamed moments before their jets crashed into the twin towers).

The toxic situation at UC Davis has been simmering for some time now, with anti-Israel activists increasingly taking steps to promote their own noxious agenda while simultaneously attempting to suppress or neutralize the speech of other pro-Israel individuals on campus. During a 2012 event at UC Davis, for example, two Israelis –a Jewish man and a Druze woman—were scheduled to speak but their appearance was effectively shut down by members of Students for Justice in Palestine and others who had decided, in advance, that “Events like these are not welcome on our campus anymore.”

What type of events would no longer be allowed? Presumably, any event which offered a platform for defending Israel or offers an alternative view of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict offered by pro-Palestinian activists. And, clearly, this 2012 event did not pass the ideological litmus test: during the presentation, a protestor used the “heckler’s veto” to silence the speakers, standing up and screaming to the podium that Israel has “turned the land of Pales­tine into a land of pros­ti­tutes and rapists and child moles­ters,” and ask­ing the speaker, “How many women have you raped? How many chil­dren have you raped? You are a child moles­ter.”

And pro-Palestinian activists on the Davis campus obviously were not concerned about civility when three Jewish students tried to speak on behalf of Israel at UC Davis at a November 2012 protest against Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense. The Jewish students were first shouted down with chants of “Leave our space!” “Shame on you!” “F**k Israel,” and “Long live the Intifada!” and then forced against a wall of windows while angry protestors threatened them with closed fists and physical aggression. When pro-Palestinian activists shout “Long live the intifada,” it is, of course, a grotesque and murderous reference to the Second Intifada, during which Arab terrorists murdered some 1000 Israelis and wounded more than 14,000 others, so the fact that this is what passes as intellectual debate about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict on campus is clear evidence that any hope of rational discourse or productive discussion has vanished. Civility has devolved into acrimony, and one can reasonably wonder, based on their language, what the true intentions are of those who defame, demean, and libel Israel in their effort to promote Palestinian self-affirmation."

There is no atrocity that if performed by Hamas would draw criticism from campus Leftists. There is no amount of self-control followed by necessary actions for survival that will not be called "atrocity" by these same people. The hatred runs so deep in both Islamicists and Leftists that there remains no rational plane on which to communicate or relate to them.

The universities, being Leftist, harbor blind hatred for the same cultures and classes that the Islamicists hate: all cultures and classes that are reflective of western values. If you wish your child to hate those cultures and classes, then by all means send him or her to UC Davis or any of the other major Leftist schools. There they will find that there is no Truth, except that it is True that hating western values is a moral essential, and that it is True that dissent cannot be tolerated in order to have a tolerant campus population. And those Truths will be enforced in the name of equality and multiculturalism.

2 comments:

Ay yay yay. 'Students' pulled this same shit back in the 1960s - same tactics, same techniques, same goal. I recall reading Alvin Kernan's "In Plato's Cave" and he wrote extensively of what they did on campus during the Vietnam War years.

The 'students' are politicizing everything, making all topics life-and-death for anyone who even mildly disagrees. I submit that this is what you get when you coddle a youth - a permanent two-year old who never quite conquers that black wish, as Lewis put it, 'to kill or die rather than submit'.

The professors are encouraging their 'students' to not only do this, but ramp it up. I wonder what they will say and do when the 'students' turn their fists and shouts on the faculty itself.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened in the 1960s, according to Kernan. Those professors whose eyes were not opened were viewed as 'useful idiots' by their students, whose overriding desire seemed at some points to be simply to tear down, to destroy everything that had enabled them to arrive at their current condition.

I think a generation that has come to believe it can survive unsupported by the society in which it lives is fundamentally immature and in some cases, insane. I can only hope this too shall pass; meanwhile I watch my back and counsel my son to watch his.

And of course, I stock up on the supplies and the spam cans of surplus ammo, and practice at the range once a month. "Praise God, but pass the ammunition" .

Everyday it reminds more of the last few minutes of the Twilight Zone episode The Obsolete Man when the uniformed citizens surrounded the former state officer who was deemed obsolete, growling and gnashing teeth, until they seize him as the episode fades to black implying he is torn limb from limb by these seething myrmidons.

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